Unfortunately, I need to bring to your attention that this process of vetting of new vendors is being compromised significantly by departments and divisions commissioning work to be done by vendors who have not been approved by the Procurement Division. This implies that vendors are commissioned without official UP purchase orders as stated in the approved UP procurement policy. Hence the applications received by the Procurement Division have to be processed even if such vendors do not comply with the regulations mentioned above - compromising the University. The occurrence of such cases has reached a level not seen before - of the 11 new applications received this morning, 9 were what categorised as post facto- the goods and services have been provided. This trend has been evident for some time now and needs to be halted.

The University has a database of more than 22 000 suppliers - approximately 5 000 have the status of "active" on the financial system - these vendors may be commissioned at any time by means of an official UP purchase order. The Procurement Division is at your disposal to identify potential existing suppliers on the database and to assist you with the registration of a new vendor where an appropriate supplier cannot be found. Reactivation of "inactive" suppliers is also processed via the Procurement Division.

The UP procurement policy is available on the intranet at:
http://www.up.ac.za/intra/web/en/services/procurement/policies/Executive_Policy.html

As ever, the Procurement Division is at your service on [email protected] or 012 420 5940, 012 420 5489 or 012 420 4970.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Susan Adendorff
Manager: Procurement
University of Pretoria